An Emersonian Guide to Taking Control of Your Life (2024)

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Sometimes, you can feel as though no one wants you to think for yourself. All day, every day, through our devices, news-media diets, and social-media accounts, we are inundated with others’ opinions on all matters. Politicians, corporations, media figures, strangers, and friends tell us what to do and think. To be a good and right-thinking person, you must vote for this, believe in that, buy this, hate that.

Have you ever fantasized about somehow rejecting all of that—blocking out the noise and focusing on your own thoughts and judgments? If so, you are hungering for what Aristotle called autarkeia, or “self-sufficiency,” which he believed is a requirement for true happiness. By this, he did not mean doing everything for yourself, such as growing all your own food or removing your own appendix. He meant making your own choices about your life and welfare, based on your independent beliefs and convictions. Or, as the psychologist Roy Baumeister puts it, developing “a reliance on internal resources to provide life with coherence (meaning) and fulfillment.”

Ample evidence exists to show that a lack of such self-sufficiency is very bad for you. Scholars have found, for example, that the young adults who are the most prone to depression and substance use are the least self-sufficient. It also stands to reason that most of us could benefit from more independence.

The challenge is how to achieve it. Luckily for us, a famous American philosopher focused on exactly that question and left us the guide to self-reliance he wrote in 1841. Read it, and you might just find the self-determining freedom you crave.

Arthur C. Brooks: You’re not perfect

Ralph Waldo Emerson was a philosopher, poet, erstwhile Unitarian minister, and, in fact, a founder of this magazine. He was also a notorious freethinker, remarkably unburdened by the conventions of his time. Arguably his most celebrated work is a long essay titled, plainly, “Self-Reliance.” This is his how-to instructional on making your own way in a world that prefers you to fall in line.

The essay, which has thrilled my heart ever since I was a young man, was so controversial in its time that Emerson’s own aunt condemned it as a “strange medley of atheism and false independence.” The reputation it has gained over the years suggests that she was much mistaken. From “Self-Reliance,” we can derive Emerson’s lessons for living with full realization of personal autonomy that stand up remarkably well to modern research. Here are eight key principles that reflect both his wisdom and our own social science to help you build your self-reliant life.

1. Maintain your privacy.
“My life is for itself and not for a spectacle,” Emerson writes. “I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady.” If Emerson believed this in the 1840s, imagine what he would think today in an era of unrestrained sharing of one’s private life via social media. In fact, researchers studying Iranian adolescents found a strong tendency toward destructive oversharing of personal information on these platforms, which can be associated with anxiety, attention-seeking, and social-media addiction. Keep your private life, well, private.

2. Don’t conform to anyone else’s thinking.
The most important message of “Self-Reliance” comes in this line: “Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.” Emerson believed that even if you agree with the prevailing conventional wisdom, you must still exercise skepticism. Think and act independently, because to embrace the wisdom of any party or clique is to don what amounts to a “prison-uniform.” Certainly, you need to be aware that going your own way can have costs. Scientists have shown in experiments that the pain of feeling rejected is processed in the same brain region as physical pain—suggesting that rejection can seem physically painful. As Emerson acknowledges, “For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure.” And that leads to the next lesson.

3. Don’t be afraid to walk alone.
There is a way to deal with the fear of others’ disapproval. Writing in the journal Psychophysiology in 2016, researchers showed that people perceive a threat when they disagree with a group and their goal is to fit in. But when they set a goal of individuality instead, the disagreement from the group is perceived as a challenge, which is positive. Stop trying to fit in and you will no longer feel hurt when you don’t. As Emerson writes, “The great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

4. Choose a life of self-discipline.
Walking your own path in life means doing your own work to be happy and successful. But no one will carry you—which leads to Emerson’s fourth lesson. “Instead of the gong for dinner,” he writes, “let us hear a whistle from the Spartan fife.” In other words, instead of expecting to be served with comforts, you should be prepared to deal with some privation—and be better for it. Today, social scientists would say Emerson is talking about having grit, the quality identified by the psychologists Angela L. Duckworth and Lauren Eskreis-Winkler of choosing to pursue long-term goals with passion and perseverance, even when they prove difficult. Gritty people tend to be successful in life; they are also happier. Once again, this isn’t the easy route in life—but that’s the point.

5. Admire virtue; pay no attention to vice.
You might be tempted to think that Emerson advocates abandoning all admiration of others. He does not; he simply argues for hardheaded discrimination between what is good and true, and everything else. “If you are noble, I will love you,” he writes, but “if you are not, I will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical attentions.” In other words, admire noble, good people, and give your attention only to what edifies and uplifts you. Psychologists have found that moral admiration of others may spur more positive qualities in yourself. Anything that is trivial, immoral, or silly is not even worth condemning; you should erase it utterly from your life.

6. Be willing to change your mind.
Most people are loath to appear inconsistent, and hate to admit having changed their minds. They fear that doing so makes them appear weak or unserious—or, worse, hypocritical. Emerson dismisses this fear in “Self-Reliance,” leading to its most famous line: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.” He advocates saying what you believe without apology, whether it is consistent with what you believed yesterday or not. Just say, “I changed my mind,” because the research shows this can make you a less anxious person and thus happier.

7. Do not lie, including to yourself, no matter how much it hurts to tell the truth.
This instruction is a hard but important one for self-sufficiency. You can make your own decisions and form your own beliefs only “by speaking the truth,” which Emerson calls “the state of war.” This is not as hyperbolic as it may sound: Research suggests that the path of least resistance in life involves a lot of prevarication toward others and even with ourselves. To be truly self-reliant, we must stand up to this tendency, and be able to say, “I disagree with you” when we do, or “I dislike my life” when, deep down, we know this to be true.

8. Don’t be a “city doll.”
Emerson had a particular aversion to the way modern institutions domesticate us and render us dependent and helpless. “If the finest genius studies at one of our colleges, and is not installed in an office within one year afterwards,” he writes, “it seems to his friends and to himself that he is right in being disheartened.” He goes on to contrast this soft desk jockey with the “sturdy lad” from the countryside who builds his own life as he sees fit, and “always, like a cat, falls on his feet.” To Emerson, the young yeoman is worth “a hundred of these city dolls.”

The metaphorical message he intends is that you should not rely on any external institution for your happiness—and this has long been confirmed by researchers who have shown that seeking happiness from without usually leads to frustration. Instead, seek your happiness within—and build your own best life strictly according to your own specifications.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: The president’s proclamation

To make all of these precepts as practical as possible, here are the eight succinct Emersonian rules for self-reliance that I try to remember. You, too, may find them helpful to monitor your behavior and conscience, and to check how self-reliant you’re managing to be.

Living by this code is not an easy path, which is why few people really follow it. But in a messy world where the majority of people are just going along and getting along, you will find it well worth trying to do so.

As if to acknowledge the difficulty and loneliness that can be involved with choosing self-reliance, Emerson concludes his essay with one more pensée to give you strength on your solitary journey: “Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.” Amen.